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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24076765">and the nighttime rolls away</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/electric_typewriter/pseuds/electric_typewriter'>electric_typewriter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Les Misérables - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ficlet, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:01:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24076765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/electric_typewriter/pseuds/electric_typewriter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel has a nightmare. Feuilly helps.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bahorel/Feuilly (Les Misérables)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and the nighttime rolls away</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bahorel wakes up with a start, choking on tears from a nightmare. </p><p>For a moment, he’s sure he’s alone. Drenched in sweat, a dark little room with old air and nothing but shadows of unreal, unalive things around him. Then he hears a little snuffle from the lump in bed next to him and reality slots in place. He tries to calm himself down, eyes mapping the familiar figure resting beside him. Hair so red you can see the colour in the dark, countless freckles coaxed to existence by the sun, a pale, knobbly hand resting on the pillow, eyebrows scrunched like he’s focusing really hard on something, fingers curling and uncurling ever so slightly. Love flickers in his chest, and then relief.</p><p>Bahorel tries to calm down. His heart is still running uncomfortably, his breath still feels laborious. The air in this room has been breathed too many times. There is no dream anymore, but he can’t shake the desperate feeling of the nightmare still clinging to his bones. Can’t shake the fear, having always existed within him, now on the surface, now everything he can think of.</p><p>He can’t do it, he can’t breathe this air so thick with the exhalations of two bodies, used up and wrung dry. He pulls himself up from bed, desperate as he is not to leave the man sleeping next to him, unpeels himself from the sheets sticking to his sweaty, clammy skin.</p><p>He goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. He needs a coffee. He’s not worried about losing sleep - he’s still too afraid to even think. It’s too early to be awake, but he doubts he could find rest anymore. His skin feels too tight, and he’s alive, and it doesn’t feel real.</p><p>He opens the kitchen window as he waits for the kettle to boil, leans out and looks up at the sky. It’s dark with clouds, hard to tell if the sun is already rising. He thinks not. Somehow he didn’t think to check the time. It feels unimportant now. The air is thick with wet heat, not the freshness he’d been craving. It’s still better than the stale air standing still in the bedroom that only makes him think of graves and dying and being alone, underground, forever. He shudders. The air feels cold on his skin still sticky with panicked sweat, but in his lungs it’s warm and heavy and too much. He chokes on the desperate whine rising in his throat.</p><p>He doesn’t notice Feuilly enter the kitchen but he hears his voice from the doorway, even over the thundering of a boiling kettle. He would hear him anywhere. </p><p>“Baby?”</p><p>Bahorel turns, his heart swelling with desperate affection. Feuilly’s hair is a mess, as it always is in the morning, pointing every which way, and there are pillow creases on his cheek. He looks half asleep, still, except for the little wrinkle between his brows, always there when he’s worried or confused. His plaid pyjama pants are too long and hang low on his hips, and he’s wearing one of Bahorel’s t-shirts, way too big on his lanky frame. He looks cozy, soft, like home. Bahorel suddenly feels a little cold. He lifts his arms, ever so slightly, doesn’t even realise he’s doing it before Feuilly steps closer and folds him in his arms, knowing, as always, what Bahorel wants or needs, sometimes before he even has time to figure it out for himself. Bahorel clutches at the back of Feuilly’s shirt and melts into his embrace, finally managing a deep, shuddering breath that fills his lungs. The next breath is a sob. Feuilly holds him tighter, pulls him closer. Protects him, always. Is there for him, never leaving him. He knows. He knows it. He always has. But the fear, desperate, agonising fear, clings and clings and does not disappear. He thinks about it, and then thinks, the demon must be named or it will never leave.</p><p>“I died,” he mumbles against Feuilly’s shoulder. “And you weren’t there, and I couldn’t look after you anymore. I couldn’t breathe. And I didn’t know where you were, and I was dead.”</p><p>Feuilly doesn’t say anything, just strokes his back and presses a soft, gentle kiss to the side of his neck. Rocks him back and forth. Warm, sure, and there, for real.  Bahorel can feel his breathing turning back into something he can control. He breathes deep, relishes in the feeling of having his lungs full, and breathes out slowly through the mouth. Relaxes into Feuilly’s hold. Does it again. His body feels heavier, his mind quieter. Feuilly always does this - brings him back to himself, holds him up when he’s not sure if he can keep standing. He can feel tears pricking at the back of his throat, but there’s no panic there anymore, just love, just overwhelmed emotion. </p><p>The kettle clicks off. Suddenly, it’s so quiet. Bahorel can hear Feuilly’s breath, and surrounds himself with it.</p><p>“I’m tired,” he says quietly. </p><p>“Me too, baby,” says Feuilly. “Wanna put something silly on and snuggle on the sofa?”</p><p>Gratitude chokes him and bursts out as a shaky exhale. He’s so relieved - he doesn’t want to go back to bed. In the shadows of still-lingering nighttime and heavy clouds, the room he woke up in, sweaty and afraid and so horribly sure he was dead and going to be alone for the rest of eternity, feels like a tomb. He doesn’t want to think about dying. He doesn’t want to think about suffocating and darkness and being alone. He wants to curl up close to the love of his life, wants to have his hair pet, wants the comfort of a sitcom he’s seen every episode of a hundred times before casting its gentle light and quiet sound upon their dark living room. He wants to fall asleep like that, and wake up uncomfortable and numb, but close, tangled together on the sofa far too small for both of them to sleep on. </p><p>“I love you,” he says, choked and desperate, fingers curling tightly into the fabric of Feuilly’s shirt. “I love you.”</p><p>“I love you too,” says Feuilly, his voice scratchy with sleep, quiet and private in the way that things can only be in the middle of the night. “You still want your coffee?”</p><p>“No,” Bahorel says. “Just want you.”</p><p>“Okay, baby,” Feuilly says, kisses his cheek softly. “Let’s go. I’ll pet your hair.”</p><p>Bahorel leans into that promise. Leans into his warmth, comfort, and unshakeable support. Closes his eyes just for a moment, and breathes. Feuilly lets him take his time, waits for him, holds him up and holds him together. Like he always has, and always will.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the first complete thing I've written in centuries. I'm working on something slightly more substantial, but that'll still be a while, I think - I'm severely out of practice. Thanks, as always, to my Bahorel/Feuilly partner in crime milou407 for existing, and for going through this for me. And also for introducing me the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QOtrhAhuJc">song</a> behind the title!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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